5 star must reading.[The
following is what I highlighted during my read of this excellent book -- I
recommend it on my Top-ten List of Peace resources. My purpose in
providing them is to interest you, the reader, and hope that you will obtain and
read the complete work. To properly understand the highlights, you need to
read the book to put them in the proper context.]

1. The Flowering of Human Consciousness

Since time immemorial, flowers, crystals, precious stones,
and birds have held special significance for the human spirit.Their special significance and the reason why humans feel such
fascination for and affinity with them can be attributed to their ethereal
quality.

Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and
alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life
essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every
life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as
themselves.

This is the spiritual awakening that we are beginning to
witness now.

...this book itself is a transformational device that has
come out of the arising new consciousness....
As you read, a shift takes place within you.

This book is about you. It will change your state of
consciousness or it will be meaningless. It can only awaken those who are ready.

You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you
cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is
necessary. You are that light.

If we look more deeply into humanity’s ancient religions
and spiritual traditions, we will find that underneath the many surface
differences there are two core insights that most of them agree on.

The first part of this truth is the realization that the
“normal” state of mind of most human beings contains a strong element of
what we might call dysfunction of even madness.

...maya, the veil
of delusion.

... to sin means to miss the point of human existence. It
means to live unskilfully, blindly, and thus to suffer and cause suffering.

Driven by greed, ignorant of their connectedness to the
whole, humans persist in behaviour that, if continued unchecked, can only result
in their own destruction.

If the history of humanity were the clinical case history
of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid
delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme
violence and cruelty against his perceived “enemies” – his own
unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid
intervals.

Fear, greed, and the desire for power are the psychological
motivating forces not only behind warfare and violence between nations, tribes,
religions, and ideologies, but also the cause of incessant conflict in personal
relationships.

It is important to realize, however, that fear, greed, and
the desire for power are not the dysfunction that we are speaking of, but are
themselves created by the dysfunction, which is a deep-seated collective
delusion that lies within the mind of each human being.... haven’t gone to the root of the dysfunction.

You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding
the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.

...the blueprint for dysfunction that every human being
carries within: the ego.

...out of this insight into the nature of the human
condition – we may call in the bad news – arises a second insight: the
goodness of the possibility of a radical transformation of human consciousness....this transformation is called enlightenment.

The greatest achievement of humanity ... the recognition of
its own dysfunction, its own madness....one of the most profound spiritual books ever written, the Tao Te
Ching.

To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the
arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.

And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather
than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred
through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more
violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different
religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies, belief
systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense
of self. Through them, they could make themselves “right” and others
“wrong” and thus define their identity through their enemies, the
“others,” the “nonbelievers” or “wrong believers” who not
infrequently they saw themselves justified in killing. Man made “God” in his
own image. The eternal, the infinite, and unnameable was reduced to a mental
idol that you had to believe in and worship as “my god” or “our god.”

They did away with layers upon layers of deadening
conceptualization and mental belief structures...Unlike mainstream religion, their teachings emphasized realization and
inner transformation.

...how “spiritual” you are has nothing to do with what
you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This in turn,
determines how you act in the world and interact with others.

... the ego is destined to dissolve, and all its ossified
structures, whether they be religious or other institutions, corporations, or
governments, will disintegrate from within, no matter how deeply entrenched they
appear to be. The most rigid structures, the most impervious to change, will
collapse first.

Responding to a radical crisis that threatens our very
survival – this is humanity’s challenge now.

...humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or
die.

What is arising now is not a new belief system, a new
religion, spiritual ideology, or mythology. We are coming to the end not only of
mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems. The change goes deeper
than the content of your mind, deeper than your thoughts.

Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which
primarily means thought forms.If
evil has any reality – and it has relative, not an absolute, reality – this
is also its definition: complete identification with form – physical forms,
thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my
connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as
well as with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering,
delusion.

...heaven is not a location but refers to the inner realm
of consciousness.

Earth, on the other hand, is the outer manifestation in
form, which is always a reflection of the inner.Collective human consciousness and life on our planet are intrinsically
connected. “A new heaven” is the emergence of a transformed state of human
consciousness, and “a new earth” is its reflection in the physical realm.

Chapter Two: Ego:
The Current Stat of Humanity

Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and
certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has
unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface
layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.

...the greatest miracle is the experiencing of you
essential self as prior to any words, thoughts, mental labels, and images.For this to happen, you need to disentangle your sense of I, of Beingness,
from all the things it has become mixed up with, that is to say, identified
with. That disentanglement is what this book is about.

What you usually refer to when you say “I” is not who
you are. By a monstrous act of reductionism, the infinite depth of who you are
is confused with a sound produced by the vocal cord or the thought of “I” in
your mind and whatever the “I” has identified with.

They are ultimately no more than thoughts held together
precariously by the fact that they are all invested with a sense of self.

To be more precise: Most of the time it is not you who
speaks when you say or think “I” but some aspect of that mental construct,
the egoic self. Once you awaken, you still use the word “I,” but it will
come from a much deeper place within yourself.

Most people are still completely identified with the
incessant stream of mind, of compulsive thinking, most of it repetitive and
pointless.

This is the meaning of being spiritually unconscious.

Thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human
existence.

“Life isn’t as serious as my mind makes it out to
be.”

I became free of compulsive thinking and of the false,
mind-made I.

...thinking is only a tiny aspect of the consciousness that
we are...

Paradoxically, what keeps the so-called consumer society
going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn’t work:
The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more, keep
buying, keep consuming.

When you live in a world deadened by mental abstraction,
you don’t sense the aliveness of the universe anymore.

Ego-identification with things creates attachment to
things, obsession with things, which in turn creates out consumer society and
economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The
unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease.

As a spiritual practice, I suggest that you investigate
your relationship with the world of things through self-observation, and in
particular, things that are designated with the word “my.”You need to be alert and honest to find out, for example, whether your
sense of self-worth is bound up with things you possess.

“Do you realize that you will have to let go of the ring
at some point, perhaps quite soon? How much more time do you need before you
will be ready to let go of it? Will you become less when you let go of it? Has
who you are become diminished by the loss?

“That is the joy of Being. ... You can only feel it when
you get out of your head. Being must be felt. It can’t be thought. The ego
doesn’t know about it because thought is what it consists of.

Whenever you completely accept a loss, you go beyond ego,
and who you are, the I Am which is consciousness itself, emerges>

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for
the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you
need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.

...enhancement of one’s self through “more than” and
diminishment through “less than” is neither right nor wrong – it is the
ego. The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in
yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously.
When you detect egoic behaviour in yourself, smile.How could humanity have been taken in by this for so long? Above all,
know that the ego isn’t personal. It isn’t who you are. If you consider the
ego to be your personal problem, that’s just more ego.

In the proximity of death, the whole concept of ownership
stands revealed as ultimately meaningless. In the last moments of their life,
they then also realize that while they were looking throughout their lives for a
more complete sense of self what they were really looking for, their Being, had
actually always already been there, but that been largely obscured by their
identification with things, which ultimately means identification with their
mind.

How do you let go to attachment to things? Don’t even
try. It’s impossible.Attachment
to things drops away by itself when you no longer seek to find yourself in them.
In the meantime, just be aware of your attachment to things.

...the imbalance of resources created by the insane and
rapacious need for more, the greed of the ego. It finds collective expression in
the economic structures of this world, such as the huge corporations, which are
egoic entities that compete with each other for more. Their only blind aim is
profit.They pursue that aim with
absolute ruthlessness. Nature, animals, people, even their own employees, are no
more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless objects to be used, then
discarded.

Apart from objects, another basic form of identification is
with “my” body.Firstly, the
body is male or female, and so the sense of being a man or woman takes up a
significant part of most people’s sense of self. Gender becomes identity.

Although body –identification is one of the most basic
forms of ego, the good news is that it is also the one that you can most easily
go beyond.This is done not by
trying to convince yourself that you are not your body, but by shifting your
attention from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body
– beautiful, ugly, strong weak, too fat too thin – to the feeling of
aliveness inside it.No matter what
your body’s appearance is on the outer level, beyond the outer form it is an
intensely alive energy field.

What I call the “inner body” isn’t really the body
any more but the life energy, the bridge between form and formless. Make it a
habit to feel the inner body as often as you can.

It is your essence identity. Body awareness not only
anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the
ego. It also strengthens the immune system of the body’s ability to heal
itself.

More fundamental than the external forms –things and
bodies – are the thought forms that continuously arise in the field of
consciousness.

Ego arises when your sense of Beingness, of “I Am,”
which is formless consciousness, gets mixed up with form. This
is the meaning of identification. This is forgetfulness of Being, the primary
error, the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a
nightmare.

The consciousness that says ‘I am’ is not the
consciousness that thinks. ... When you are aware that you are thinking, that
awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness.
And it is that awareness that says “I am.”

There are many accounts of people who experienced that
emerging new dimension of consciousness as a result of tragic loss at some point
in their lives.

Whatever they had identified with, whatever gave them their
sense of self, had been taken away. Then suddenly and inexplicably, the anguish
or intense fear they initially felt gave way to a sacred sense of Presence, a
deep peace and serenity and complete freedom from fear.

In the face of this, how can it be that I feel such peace?

The answer is simple, once you realize what the ego is and
how it works. When forms that you had identified with, that gave you your sense
of self, collapse or are taken away, it can lead to a collapse of the ego, since
ego is identification with form. When there is nothing to identify with anymore,
who are you? When forms around you die or death approaches, your sense of
Beingness, of I Am, is freed from its entanglement with form: Spirit is released
from its imprisonment in matter. You realize your essential identity as
formless, as an all-pervasive Presence, of Being prior to all forms, all
identifications. You realize your true identity as consciousness itself, rather
than what consciousness had identified with. That’s the peace of God. The
ultimate truth of who you are is not I am this or I am that, but I Am.

Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you
yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become
compassionate, wise, and loving.Yielding
means inner acceptance of what is. You are open to life.

When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new
dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your
action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative
intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness
you become one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative.
Coincidences happen. If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner
stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God.

Chapter Three: The
Core of Ego

...every ego is continuously struggling for survival,
trying to protect and enlarge itself. To uphold the I-thought, it needs the
opposite thought of “the other.” ...The others are most other when I see
them as my enemies....faultfinding...
complaining about others....At the
other end of the scale, there is physical violence between individuals and
warfare between nations....Because
when I criticize or condemn another, it makes me feel bigger, superior.

...you can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can
recognize someone’s behaviour as coming from the ego, as being an expression
of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it’s not personal, there
is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were. By not reacting to the ego you
will often be able to bring about the sanity in others, which is the
unconditioned consciousness as opposed to the conditioned.... Your greatest protection, ... is being conscious.Somebody becomes an enemy if you personalize the unconsciousness that is
the ego. Non-reaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to
look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human
being as his or her essence.

There is no ego ... if you stick to the facts, which are
always neutral.

The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is
strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern.
Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.

To carry a grievance is to be in a permanent state of
“against”...

Don’t try to let go of the grievance.Trying to let go, to forgive, does not work. Forgiveness happens
naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false
sense of self, to keep the ego in place. This seeing is freeing. ...”Forgive
your enemies” is essentially about the undoing of one of the main egoic
structures in the human mind.

The past has no power to stop you from being present now.
Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The
baggage of old thought and emotion.

Every ego confuses opinions and viewpoints with facts.
Furthermore, it cannot tell the difference between an event and its reaction to
that event.Every ego is a master of
selective perception and distorted interpretation. Only though awareness – not
through thinking – can you differentiate between fact and opinion.

Beyond the realm of simple and verifiable facts, the
certainty that “I am right and you are wrong” is a dangerous thing in
personal relationships as well as in interactions between nations, tribes,
religions, and so on.

The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the
Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time. The very
Being that you are is Truth.

...the Christ within; ... your Buddha nature; for Hindus,
it is Atman, the indwelling of God. When you are in touch with that dimension
within yourself – and being in touch with it is your natural state, not some
miraculous achievement – all your actions and relationships will reflect the
oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love.

Both sides believe themselves to be in possession of the
truth. Both regard themselves as victims and the “other” as evil, and
because they have conceptualized and thereby dehumanized the other as the enemy,
they can kill and inflict all kinds of violence on the other, even on children,
without feeling their humanity and suffering. They become trapped in an insane
spiral of perpetration and retribution, action and reaction.

By far the greater part of violence that humans have
inflicted on each other is not the work of criminals or the mentally deranged,
but of normal, respectable citizens in the service of the collective ego. One
can go so far as to say that on this planet “normal” equals insane. What is
it that lies at the root of this insanity? Complete identification with thought
and emotion, that is to say, ego.

Greed, selfishness, exploitation, cruelty, and violence are
still all-pervasive on this planet.

...you have much to learn from your enemies.

Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another
is also in you.

War is a mind-set.

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist,
persists.

...alternative approaches to disease that do not treat the
illness as an enemy and therefore do not create new diseases.

You do not fuel the drama anymore that is part of all egoic
relationships. What is its fuel? Reactivity. The ego thrives on it.

Do you want peace or drama? You want peace. There is no one
who does not want peace. Yet there is something else in you that wants the
drama, wants the conflict.

Can you be aware of your mind racing to defend its
position, justify, attack, blame? In other words, can you awaken at that moment
of unconsciousness? Can you feel that there is something in you that is at war,
something that feels threatened and wants to survive at all cost, that needs the
drama in order to assert its identity as the victorious character within that
theatrical production? Can you feel there is something in you that would rather
be right than at peace?

Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present
moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human
existence, which is to say, your purpose, is to bring that power into this
world.... Only Presence can free
you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Only
Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of
consciousness.

Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I
perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, that I cannot
find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.

The only thing that ultimately matters is this: Can I sense
my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? To
be more accurate, can I sense the I Am that I Am at this moment? Can I sense my
essential identity as consciousness itself? Or am I losing myself in what
happens, losing myself in the mind, in the world?

Only the truth of who you are, if realized, will set you
free.

DANGER. ALL STRUCTURES ARE UNSTABLE. ... Once you realize
and accept that all structures (forms) are unstable, even the seemingly solid
material ones, peace arises within you. This is because the recognition of the
impermanence of all forms awakens you to the dimension of the formless within
yourself, that which is beyond death. Jesus called it “eternal life.”

This is why it is hard for a famous person to be in a
genuine relationship with others. A genuine relationship is one that is not
dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine
relationship,there is an outward
flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no
wanting whatsoever. That alert attention is Presence. It is the prerequisite for
any authentic relationship.The ego
always either wants something, or if it believes there is nothing to get from
the other, it is in a state of utter indifference: It doesn’t care about you.
And so, the three predominant states of egoic relationships are: wanting,
thwarted wanting (anger, resentment, blaming, complaining), and indifference.

Chapter 4: Role-playing: The many faces of the ego.

The ego thrives on others’ attention, which is after all
a form of psychic energy. The ego doesn’t know that the source of all energy
is within you, so it seeks it outside.

All you need to know and observe in yourself is this:
Whenever you feel superior or inferior to anyone, that’s the ego in you.

...as every therapist knows, the ego does not want an end
to its “problems” because they are part of its identity.

...true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.

When you play roles, you are unconscious. When you catch
yourself playing a role, that recognition creates a space between you and the
role. It is the beginning of freedom from the role.

The functions people have in hierarchical organizations,
such as the military, the church, a government institution, or large
corporation, easily lend themselves to becoming role identities. Authentic human
interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.

...the insanity of the collective was so obvious.

If there is unhappiness in you, first you need to
acknowledge that it is there. But don’t say, “I’m unhappy.” Unhappiness
has nothing to do with who you are. Say: “There is unhappiness in me.” Then
investigate it.

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but
your thoughts about it.Be aware of
the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always
neutral, which always is as it is.

Don’t seek happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find
it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness. Happiness is ever elusive,
but freedom from unhappiness is attainable now, by facing what is rather than
making up stories about it.Unhappiness
covers up your natural state of well-being and inner peace, the source of true
happiness.

The fact that you temporarily know more or that you are
bigger does not mean the child is not your equal.

Awareness is the greatest agent of change.

If your parents are doing this to you, do not tell them
they are unconscious and in the grip of ego. That will likely make them even
more unconscious, because the ego will take p a defensive position. It is enough
for you to recognize that it is the ego in them, that it is not who they are....you can them accept your parents’ behaviour with compassion, without
needing to react to it, that is to say, without personalizing it.

What difference does their approval or disapproval truly
make to who you are? All such unexamined assumptions cause a great deal of
negative emotion, much unnecessary unhappiness.

“If you think you are so enlightened ... go and spend a
week with your parents.” That is good advice. The relationship with your
parents is not only the primordial relationship that sets the tone for all
subsequent relationships, it is also a good test for your degree of Presence.
The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to
be; otherwise, you will be forced to relive the past again and again.

...give them space – space to be. ... Eventually, they
will make mistakes, and they will experience some form of suffering, as all
humans do. In fact, they may be mistakes only from your perspective. What to you
is a mistake may be exactly what your children need to do or experience.Give them as much help and guidance as you can, but realize that you may
also at times have to allow them to make mistakes... Suffering drives you
deeper. The paradox is that suffering is caused by identification with form and
erodes identification with form. A lot of it is caused by the ego, although
eventually suffering destroys the ego – but not until you suffer consciously.

Suffering has noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness
and the burning up of the ego.

The truth is that you need to say yes to suffering before
you can transcend it.

The child has a deep longing for the parent to be there as
a human being, not as a role, no matter how conscientiously that role is being
played....In fact, doing is
never enough if you neglect Being. The ego knows nothing of Being but believes
you will eventually be saved by doing. If you are in the grip of the ego, you
believe that by doing more and more you will eventually accumulate enough
“doings” to make yourself feel complete at some point in the future. You
won’t. You will only lose yourself in doing.The entire civilization is losing itself in doing that is not rooted in
Being and thus becomes futile.

Formless attention is inseparable from the dimension of
Being. How does it work?

As you look at, listen to, touch, or help your child with
this or that, you are alert, still, completely present, not wanting anything
other than that moment as it is.In
this way, you make room for Being. In that moment, if you are present, you are
not a father or mother. You are the alertness, the stillness, the Presence that
is listening, looking, touching, even speaking. You are the Being behind the
doing.

There is no equality between you and your child because
there is only form in your relationship, and in form, you are of course not
equal....Only beyond form, in
Being, are you equal, and only when you find the formless dimension in yourself
can there be true love in that relationship. The Presence that you are, in the
timeless I Am, recognizes itself in another, and in the other, the child in this
case, feels loved, that is to say, recognized.

To love is to recognize yourself in another.... The longing for love that is in every child is the longing to be
recognized, not on the level of form, but on the level of Being.If parents honour only the human dimension of the child but neglect
Being, the child will sense that the relationship is unfulfilled, that something
absolutely vital is missing, and there will be a build-up of pain in the child
and sometimes unconscious resentment toward the parents.

When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the
dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you.That is the love that redeems the world.

Love implies duality: lover and beloved, subject and
object. So love is the recognition of oneness in the world of duality. This is
the birth of God into the world of form.Love
makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine
dimension, the light of consciousness itself.

Most of the people who are in positions of power in this
world, such as politicians, TV personalities, business as well as religious
leaders, are completely identified with their role, with a few notable
exceptions. ...If the egoic earth
drama has any purpose at all, it is an indirect one: It creates more and more
suffering on the planet, and suffering, although largely ego-created, is in the
end also ego-destructive.

...those who do not attempt to appear more than they are
but are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who
truly make a difference in this world. They are the bringers of the new
consciousness. Whatever they do becomes empowered because it is in alignment
with the purpose of the whole. Their influence, however, goes far beyond what
they do, far beyond their function. Their mere presence – simple, natural,
unassuming – has a transformational effect on whoever they come into contact
with.

...the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality
rather than something that is already defined.

Why does the ego play roles? Because of one unexamined
assumption, one fundamental error, one unconscious thought. That thought is: I
am not enough.

The ego in its blindness is incapable of seeing the
suffering it inflicts on itself and on others.Unhappiness is an ego-created mental-emotional disease that has reached
epidemic proportions. It is the inner equivalent of the environmental pollution
of our planet. Negative states such as anger, anxiety, hatred, resentment,
discontent, envy, jealousy, and so on, are not recognized as negative but as
totally justified and are further misperceived not as self-created but as caused
by someone else or some external factor. “I am holding you responsible for my
pain.” This is what by implication the ego is saying.

The ego cannot distinguish between a situation and its
interpretation of and reaction to that situation.

If in the midst of negativity you are able to realize “At
this moment I am creating suffering for myself” it will be enough to raise you
above the limitations of conditioned egoic states and reactions. It will open up
infinite possibilities which come to you when there is awareness – other
vastly more intelligent ways of dealing with any situation. You will be free to
let go of your unhappiness the moment you recognize it is unintelligent.Negativity is not intelligent.It
is always of the ego.The ego may be
clever, but it is not intelligent.Cleverness
pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all
things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is
extremely short-sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very
few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and
always turns out to be eventually self-defeating. Cleverness divides;
intelligence includes.

...other more subtle forms of negativity... impatience,
irritation, nervousness, and being “fed up.”

...one of the most common negative states that is easily
overlooked... Do you often experience a feeling of discontent that could best be
described as a kind of background resentment?

Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being
yourself, are one.... Peace, after
all, is the end of the ego.

How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present
moment. The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens.... There are three words that convey the secret of the art of living,
the secret of all success and happiness: One With Life. Being on with life is
being one with Now.

To create suffering without recognizing it – this is the
essence of unconscious living; this is being totally in the grip of the ego. The
extent of the ego’s inability to recognize itself and see what it is doing is
staggering and unbelievable. It will do exactly what it condemns other for and
not see it.

To end the misery that has afflicted the human condition
for thousands of years, you have to start with yourself and take responsibility
for your inner state at any given moment. That means now. Ask yourself, “Is
there negativity in me at this moment.”

To become free of the ego is not really a big job but a
very small one. All you need to do is to be aware of your thoughts and emotions
– as they happen.

...the ego is in its essential nature pathological, if we
use the word in its wider sense to denote dysfunction and suffering.

Sometimes organizations or entire nations have paranoid
belief systems at their very basis. ...makes others into inhuman monsters....The stronger the ego in you, the more likely it is that in your
perception other people are the main source of problems in your life.It is also more than likely that you will make life difficult for others.
But, of course, you won’t be able to see that. It is always others who seem to
be doing it to you.

The collective
ego of tribes, nations, and religious organizations also frequently contains a
strong element of paranoia: us against the evil others. It is the cause of much
human suffering.

Violence is a primitive but still very widespread way in
which the ego attempts to assert itself, to prove itself right and another
wrong.With very unconscious people,
arguments can easily lead to physical violence. What is an argument? Two or more
people express their opinions and those opinions differ. Each person is so
identified with the thoughts that make up their opinion, that those thoughts
harden into mental positions which are invested with a sense of self. In other
words: Identity and thought merge. Once this has happened, when I defend my
opinions (thoughts), I feel and act as if I were defending my very self.
Unconsciously, I feel and act as if I were fighting for survival and so my
emotions will reflect this unconscious belief.

Anybody who is one with what he or she does is building the
new earth.

When work is no more than a means to an end, it cannot be
of high quality.

...”anti”-energy creates new obstacles, new opposition.
Many people are truly their own worst enemy.

Cooperation is alien to the ego...the more you include others, the more smoothly things glow and the more
easily things come to you.

In order to attract success, you need to welcome it
wherever you see it.

A collective ego is usually more unconscious than the
individuals that make up that ego....Nations
not infrequently engage in behaviour that would be immediately recognizable as
psychopathic in an individual.

Enlightened collectives will fulfill an important function
in the arising of the new consciousness.

If there is such a thing as “my life,” it follows that
I and life are two separate things, and so I can also lose my life, my imaginary
treasured possession.

There is no such thing as “my life,” and I don’t have
a life. I am life. I and life are one. It cannot be otherwise. So how could I
lose my life? How can I lose something that I don’t have in the first place?
How can I lose something that I Am? It is impossible.

Chapter 5: The Pain-Body

The voice in the head has a life of its own. Most people
are at the mercy of that voice; they are possessed by thought, by the mind.And since the mind is so conditioned by the past, you are then forced to
re-enact the past again and again. The Eastern term for this is karma.

The fundamental difference between an instinctive response
and an emotion is this: An instinctive response is the body’s direct response
to some external situation. An emotion, on the other hand, is the body’s
response to a thought.

Although the body is very intelligent, it cannot tell the
difference between an actual situation and a thought. It reacts to every thought
as if it were a reality.

The vicious circle between unexamined thoughts and
emotions, giving rise to emotional thinking and emotional story-telling.

Those thoughts exist at a preverbal stage and could be
called unspoken, unconscious assumptions. They have their origin ina person’s past conditioning, usually from early childhood. “People
cannot be trusted” would be an example of such an unconscious assumption in a
person whose primordial relationships, that is to say, with parents and
siblings, were not supportive and did not inspire trust. Here are a few more
common unconscious assumptions: “Nobody respects and appreciates me. I need to
fight to survive. There is never enough money. Life always lets you down. I
don’t deserve abundance. I don’t deserve love.”

You can see how problematic the duck’s life would become
if it had a human mind. But this is how most humans live all the time. No
situation or event is ever really finished. The mind and the mind-made “me and
my story” keep it going.

Our duck’s lesson is this: Flap your wings – which
translates as “let go of the story” – and return to the only place of
power: the present moment.

What a heavy burden of past they carry around with them in
their minds.

...most people carry a large amount of unnecessary baggage,
both mental and emotional, throughout their lives. They limit themselves through
grievances, regret, hostility, guilt.Their
emotional thinking has become their self, and so they hang on to the old emotion
because it strengthens their identity.

Our very presence then becomes our identity, rather than
our thoughts and emotions.

Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from
being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now,
what power does it have?

Any negative emotion that is not fully faced and seen for
what it is in the moment it arises does not completely dissolve. It leaves
behind a remnant of pain.

In some cases, it interferes with or sabotages every
intimate relationship.... Even if
both of your parents were enlightened, you would still find yourself growing up
in a largely unconscious world.

This energy field of old but still very-much-alive emotion
that lives in almost every human being is the pain-body.

The pain-body, however, is not just individual in nature.
It also partakes of the pain suffered by countless humans throughout the history
of humanity, which is a history of continuous tribal warfare, of enslavement,
pillage, rape, torture, and other forms of violence. This pain still lives in
the collective psyche of humanity and is being added to on a daily basis...The collective pain-body is probably encoded within every human’s
DNA...

Every newborn who comes into this world already carries an
emotional pain-body.

...the suffering body of Christ... Christ can be seen as
the archetypal human, embodying both the pain and the possibility of
transcendence.

The pain body is an addiction to unhappiness.

...a psychic parasite...

It is almost unbearably painful for a young child to have
to witness the emotional violence of their parents’ pain-bodies, and yet that
is the fate of millions of children all over the world, the nightmare of their
daily existence.That is also one of
the main ways in which the human pain-body is passed on from generation to
generation.

A deeply unconscious person whose pain-body habitually
replenishes itself through physical violence often directs it toward his spouse
or children.... The person who is
talking and making promises, however, is not the entity that commits the
violence, and so you can be sure that it will happen again and again unless he
becomes present, recognizes the pain-body within himself, and thus dis-identifies
from it.

Most pain-bodies want to both inflict and suffer pain, but
some are predominantly either perpetrators or victims.

In intimate relationships, pain-bodies are often clever
enough to lie low until you start living together and preferable have signed a
contract committing yourself to be with this person for the rest of your life.
You don’t just marry your wife or husband, you also marry her or his pain-body
– and your spouse marries yours.If
can be quite a shock.

It would be hard to find a partner who does not carry a
pain-body, but it would perhaps be wise to choose someone whose pain-body is not
excessively dense.

Sometimes people with such dense pain-bodies become
activists fighting for a cause. The cause may indeed be worthy, and they are
sometimes successful at first in getting things done; however, the negative
energy that flows into what they say and do and their unconscious need for
enemies and conflict tend to generate increasing opposition to their cause.Usually they also end up creating enemies within their own organization,
because wherever they go, they find reasons for feeling bad, and so their
pain-body continues to find exactly what it is looking for.

...one of the things that would amaze you is that millions
of people love and pay money to watch humans kill and inflict pain on each other
and call it “entertainment.”

...films can fulfill a vital function in the awakening of
humanity.

Nobody knows the exact figure because records were not
kept, but it seems certain that during a three-hundred year period between three
and five million women were tortured and killed by the “Holy Inquisition,”
an institution founded by the Roman Catholic Church to suppress heresy. This
surely ranks together with the Holocaust as one of the darkest chapters in human
history.

Other cultures and religions, such as Judaism, Islam, and
even Buddhism, also suppressed the female dimension, although in a less violent
way. Women’s status was reduced to being child bearers and men’s property.Males who denied the feminine even within themselves were now running the
world, a world that was totally out of balance.

What is it that suddenly made men feel threatened by the
female? The evolving ego in them. It knew it could gain full control of our
planet only through the male form, and to do so, it had to render the female
powerless.

In time, the ego also took over most women, although it
could never become as deeply entrenched in them as in men.

But things are changing rapidly now. With many people
becoming more conscious, the ego is losing its hold on the human mind. Because
the ego was never as deeply rooted in women, it is losing its hold on women more
quickly than on men.

Spiritual practices that involve the physical body, such as
t’ai chi, qigong, and yoga, are also increasingly being embraced by the
Western world. These practices do not create a separation between the body and
spirit and are helpful in weakening the pain-body. They will play an important
role in the global awakening.

It is always the case that both victim and perpetrator
suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality. For
what you do to others, you do to yourself.

There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human
unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your
victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges – the power of
Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.

Chapter six: Breaking Free

The beginning of freedom from the pain-body lies first of
all in the realization that you have a pain-body. Then, more important, in your
ability to stay present enough, alert enough, to notice the pain-body in
yourself as a heavy influx of negative emotion when it becomes active.When it is recognized, it can no longer pretend to be you and live and
renew itself though you.

It is your conscious presence that breaks the
identification with the pain-body. When you don’t identify with it, the
pain-body can no longer control your thinking and so cannot renew itself anymore
by feeding on your thoughts.

How can you be responsible when you are unconscious, when
you don’t know what you are doing? However, in the greater scheme of things,
human beings are meant to evolve into conscious beings, and those who don’t
will suffer the consequences of their unconsciousness.

When you can’t stand the endless cycle of suffering
anymore, you being to awaken.

I directed the focus of her attention to what she was
feeling inside her body and asked her to sense the emotion directly, instead of
through the filter of her unhappy thoughts, her unhappy story.... “At this moment, this is what you feel,” “There is nothing you
can do about the fact that at this moment this is what you fee. Now, instead of
wanting this moment to be different from the way it is, which adds more pain to
the pain that is already there,is
it possible for you to completely accept that this is what you feel right
now?”

“I am not asking you to do anything. All I’m asking is
that you find out whether it is possible for you to allow those feelings to be
there....if you don’t mind being
unhappy, what happens to the unhappiness? Don’t you want to find out?”

Since you cannot be unhappy without an unhappy story, this
was the end of her unhappiness. It was also the beginning of the end of her
pain-body. Emotion in itself is not unhappiness. Only emotion plus an unhappy
story is unhappiness.

...the arising of Presence in another human being. The very
reason for our existence in human form is to bring that dimension of
consciousness into this world.

Highly sensitive children are particularly affected by
their parents’ pain-bodies.

Let your attitude be one of interest or curiosity rather
than one of criticism or condemnation.

Not all unhappiness is of the pain-body. Some of it is new
unhappiness, created whenever you are out of alignment with the present moment,
when the Now is denied in one way or another.

The pain-body’s unhappiness is always clearly out of
proportion to the apparent cause. In other words, it is an overreaction.

Pain-body and ego are close relatives. The need each other.

It requires a high degree of Presence to avoid reacting
when confronted by someone with such an active pain-body. If you are able to
stay present, it sometimes happens that your Presence enables the other person
to dis-identify from his or her own pain-body and thus experience the miracle of
a sudden awakening.

“This isn’t important at all, is it?” “No, it
isn’t”...

I had not reacted, not confirmed the reality of her story,
not fed her mind with more thought and her pain-body with more emotion. I had
allowed her to experience whatever she was experiencing at that moment, and the
power of allowing lies in non-interference, non-doing. Being present is always
infinitely more powerful than anything one could say or do, although sometimes
being present can give rise to words or actions.

Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love,
true care, true compassion.

Whatever you identify with turns into ego.

...”fed up with being unhappy.” Some people may feel,
as I did, that they cannot live with themselves anymore. Inner peace then
becomes their first priority. There acute emotional pain forces them to dis-identify
from the content of their minds and the mental-emotional structures that give
birth to and perpetuate the unhappy me. They then know that neither their
unhappy story nor the emotion they feel is who they are. They realize they are
the knowing, not the known. Rather than pulling them into unconsciousness, the
pain-body becomes their awakener, the decisive factor that forces them into a
state of Presence.

However, due to the unprecedented influx of consciousness
we are witnessing on the planet now, many people no longer need to go through
the depth of acute suffering to be able to dis-identify from the pain-body.Whenever they notice they have slipped back into a dysfunctional state,
they are able to choose to step out of identification with thinking and emotion
and enter the state of Presence.They
relinquish resistance, become still and alert, one with what is, within and
without.

The Next step in human evolution is not inevitable, but for
the first time in the history of our planet, it can be a conscious choice.Who is making that choice? You are. And who are you? Consciousness that
has become conscious itself.

“How long does it take to become free of identification
with the pain body?”

And the answer to that question is: It takes no time at
all. When the pain-body is activated, know that what you are feeling is the
pain-body in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your
identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the
transmutation begins.

When you feel the pain-body, don’t fall into the error of
thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem –
the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting.Anything else will obscure it again. Accepting means you allow yourself
to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the is-ness
of the Now. You can’t argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you
suffer.Through allowing, you become
what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore,
which is how the ego perceives itself.Your
true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

Chapter seven: Finding Who You Truly Are.

Gnothi Seauton – Know Thyself. These words were inscribed
above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, site of the sacred Oracle.

What those words imply is this: Before you ask any other
question, first ask the most fundamental question of your life: Who am I?

Knowing yourself goes far deeper than the adoption of a set
of ideas or beliefs. ...Knowing yourself is to be rooted in Being, instead of
lost in your mind.

What matters to you is not necessarily what you say or
believe, but what your actions and reactions reveal as important and serious to
you. So you may want to ask yourself the question: What are the things that
upset and disturb me?

If peace is really what you want, then you will choose
peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly know
yourself to be spirit rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and
absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations.You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with I
rather than separate yourself from it. Then, out of your alertness would come a
response. Who you are (consciousness), not who you think you are (a small me),
would be responding. It would be powerful and effective and would make no person
or situation into an enemy.

How you react to people and situations, especially when
challenges arise, is the best indicator of how deeply you know yourself.

If the thought of lack – whether it be money,
recognition, or love – has become part of who you think you are, you will
always experience lack....Acknowledging
the good that is already in your life is the foundation for all abundance.

Try this for a couple of weeks and see how it changes your
reality: Whatever you think people are withholding from you – praise,
appreciation, assistance, loving care, and so on – give it to them You don’t
have it? Just act as if you had it, and it will come.Then, soon after you start giving, you will start receiving. You cannot
receive what you don’t give. Outflow determines inflow.

The source of all abundance is not outside you. It is part
of who you are.

Most people define themselves through the content of their
lives. Whatever you perceive, experience, do, think, or feel is content. Content
is what absorbs most people’s attention entirely, and it is what they identify
with. When you think or say, “my life,” you are not referring to the life
that you are but the life that you have, or seem to have.

What is there other than content? That which enables the
content to be – the inner space of consciousness.

...a higher order and purpose.

We can never understand this higher order through thinking
about it because whatever we think about is content: whereas, the higher order
emanates from the formless realm of consciousness, from universal intelligence.
But we can glimpse it, and more than that, align ourselves with it, which means
be conscious participants in the unfolding of that higher purpose.

...a higher order in which everything has its perfect place
and could not be other than what it is and the way it is.

You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense
it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to
understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness. ...As soon
as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not
separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant
in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of
life.

...the universe is an indivisible whole in which all things
are interconnected, in which nothing exists in isolation.

The wise man’s “maybe” signifies a refusal to judge
anything that happens. Instead of judging what is, he accepts it and so enters
into conscious alignment with the higher order.He knows that often it is impossible for the mind to understand what
place or purpose a seemingly random event has in the tapestry of the whole. But
there are no random events, nor are there events or things that exist by and for
themselves, in isolation.

The cosmos is not chaotic. The very word cosmos means
order.

“This is my secret”... “ I don’t mind what
happens.”

When I don’t mind what happens, what does that imply? It
implies that internally I am in alignment with what happens. “What happens,
“ of course, refers to the suchness of this moment, which always already is as
it is.It refers to content, the
form that this moment – the only moment there ever is – takes. To be in
alignment with what is means to be in a relationship of inner non-resistance
with what happens.It means not to
label it mentally as good or bad, but to let it be. Does this mean you can no
longer take action to bring about change in your life? On the contrary. When the
basis for your actions is inner alignment with the present moment, your actions
become empowered by the intelligence of Life itself.

He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it
is and so does not become a participant in human drama.

Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of
what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.

The most important, the primordial relationship in your
life is your relationship with the Now, or rather with whatever form the Now
takes, that is to say, what is or what happens. If
your relationship with the Now is dysfunctional, that dysfunction will be
reflected in every relationship and every situation you encounter. The ego could
be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present
moment. It is at this moment that you can decide what kind of relationship you
want to have with the present moment.

Once you have reached a certain level of consciousness...
you are able to decide what kind of a relationship you want to have with the
present moment.

...you are really deciding what kind of a relationship you
want to have with life.

The decision to make the present moment into your friend is
the end of the ego.

...and you come to inhabit a world of problems that all
need to be solved before you can be happy, fulfilled, or really start living –
or so you think.The problem is: For
every problem that is solved, another one pops up.

A vital question to ask yourself frequently is: What is my
relationship with the present moment? Then become alert to find out the answer.
Am I treating the Now as no more than a means to an end? Do I see it as an
obstacle? Am I making it into an enemy? Since the present moment is all you ever
have, since Life is inseparable from the Now, what the question really means is:
What is my relationship with Life?This
question is an excellent way of unmasking the ego in you and bringing you into
the state of Presence.

So instead of adding time to yourself, remove time. The
elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination of the ego. It is
the only true spiritual practice.

...not referring to clock time...

What we are speaking of is the elimination of psychological
time, which is the egoic mind’s endless preoccupation with past and future and
its unwillingness to be one with life by living in alignment with the inevitable
isness of the present moment.

The more reactive you are, the more entangled you become
with form. The more identified with form, the stronger the ego. Your Being then
does not shine through form anymore – or only barely.

Through non-resistance to form, that in you which is beyond
form emerges as an all-encompassing Presence, a silent power far greater than
your short-lived form identity, the person. It is more deeply who you are than
anything in the world of form.

Non-resistance is the key to the greatest power in the
universe. Through it, consciousness (spirit) is freed from its imprisonment in
form....Resistance makes the world
and the things of the world appear more real, more solid, and more lasting than
they are, including your own form identity, the ego.

We are here not only to experience limitation, but also to
grow in consciousness by going beyond limitation....Those limitations either keep you trapped in egoic reaction, which
means intense unhappiness, or you rise above them internally by uncompromising
surrender to what is. That is what they are here to teach.

The affluent world is even more deeply identified with
form, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.

People believe themselves to be dependent on what happens
for their happiness, that is to say, dependent on form.They don’t realize that what happens is the most unstable thing in the
universe. It changes constantly.

The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot
come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event –
through anything that happens.That
joy cannot come to you –ever.It
emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and
thus is one with who you are.

You haven’t been diminished at all. In fact, you have
expanded. You may then come to an amazing realization: When you are seemingly
diminished in some way and remain in absolute non-reaction, not just externally
but also internally, you realize that nothing real has been diminished, that
through becoming “less,” you become more.

If you are content with being nobody in particular, content
not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe.What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our
contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave.

The answer is both simple and profound. When you are aware
of space, you are not really aware of anything, except awareness itself – the
inner space of consciousness. Through you, the universe is becoming aware of
itself!

God, the scriptures says, is formless consciousness and the
essence of who you are.

The collective disease of humanity is that people are so
engrossed in what happens, so hypnotized by the world of fluctuating forms, so
absorbed in the content of their lives, they have forgotten the essence, that
which is beyond content, beyond form, beyond thought.They are so consumed by time that they have forgotten eternity, which is
their origin, their home, their destiny. Eternity is the living reality of who
you are.

“One,” means ‘man.’The other means ‘no.’ And
the two together means ‘Buddha.’ I stood there in awe. The character for
Buddha already contained the whole teaching of the Buddha, and for those who
have eyes to see, the secret of life. Here are the two dimensions that make up
reality, thing-ness and nothing-ness, form and the denial of form, which is the
recognition that form is not who you are.

Chapter eight: The Discovery of Inner Space.

This, too, will pass. What is it about these simple words
that makes them so powerful?

...the good that comes through inner non-resistance to
events, that is to say, being at one with what happens. ...the wisdom of
non-judgement...

...the fact of impermanence which, when recognized, leads
to non-attachment. Non-resistance, non-judgement, and non-attachment are the
three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.

Being detached does not mean that you cannot enjoy the good
that the world has to offer. In fact, you enjoy it more. Once you see and accept
the transience of all things and the inevitability of change, you can enjoy the
pleasures of the world while they last without fear of loss or anxiety about the
future.

This, too, will pass. Suddenly, there is space around the
event. There is also space around the emotional highs and lows, even around
pain. And above all, there is space between your thoughts. And from that space
emanates a peace that is not “of this world,” because this world is form,
and the peace is space. This is the peace of God.

All such suffering is due to an overvaluation of form and
an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.

When the world is not viewed from the perspective of the
formless, it becomes a threatening place, and ultimately a place of despair.

Most people’s lives are cluttered up with things:
material things, things to do, things to think about.

This is the dimension of object consciousness that is many
people’s predominant reality, and that is why their lives are so out of
balance. Object consciousness needs to be balanced by space consciousness for
sanity to return to our planet and for humanity to fulfill its destiny. The
arising of space consciousness is the next stage in the evolution of humanity.

Space consciousness means that in addition to being
conscious of things – which always comes down to sense perceptions, thoughts,
and emotions – there is an undercurrent of awareness....you are also conscious of being conscious. If you can sense and alert
inner stillness in the back ground while things happen in the foreground –
that’s it!

Space consciousness represents not only freedom from ego,
but also from dependency on the things of this world, from materialism and
materiality. It is the spiritual dimension which alone can give transcendent and
true meaning to this world.

Whenever you are upset about an event, a person, or a
situation, the real cause is not the event, person, or situation but a loss of
true perspective that only space can provide....The words “This, too, will pass” when used as a pointer can
restore awareness of that dimension to you.

Another pointer to the truth in you is contained in the
following statement: “I am never upset for the reason I think.”

Space consciousness has little to do with being “spaced
out.”Both states are beyond
thought. This they have in common. The fundamental difference, however, is that
in the former, you rise above thought; in the latter, you fall below it. One is
the next step in the evolution of human consciousness, the other a regression to
a stage we left behind eons ago.

Television has this in common with alcohol and certain
other drugs. While it provides some relief from your mind, you again pay a high
price: loss of consciousness.

Laughter is extraordinarily liberating as well as healing.

“For happiness, how little suffices for happiness!... the
least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s
rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance – little maketh up the best
happiness. Be still.” – Nietzsche

Why is it the “least thing” that makes up the “best
happiness”? Because true happiness is not caused by the thing or event,
although this is how it first appears. The thing or event is so subtle, so
un-obstructive, that it takes up only a small part of your consciousness – and
the rest is inner space, consciousness itself unobstructed by form. Inner space
consciousness and who you are in your essence are one and the same. In other
words, the form of little things leaves room for inner space. And it is from
inner space, the unconditioned consciousness itself, that true happiness, the
joy of Being , emanates. To be aware of little, quiet things, however, you need
to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look,.
Listen. Be present.

It was his first satori – flash of enlightenment. He know
what Zen was without knowing what it was that he knew.

Presence is a state of inner spaciousness. When you are
present, you ask: How do I respond to the needs of this situation, of this
moment? In fact, you don’t even need to ask the question. You are still,
alert, open to what is. You bring a new dimension into the situation: space.
Then you look and you listen. Thus you become one with the situation. When
instead of reacting against a situation, you merge with it, the solution arises
out of the situation itself.Actually,
it is not you, the person, who is looking and listening, but the alert stillness
itself.Then, if action is possible
or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you.Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole.

All creativity comes out of inner spaciousness.

This is most people’s reality” As soon as something is
perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked,
disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego. They are
imprisoned in thought forms, in object consciousness.

You do not awaken spiritually until the compulsive and
unconscious naming ceases, or at least you become aware of it and thus are able
to observe it as it happens.

So who is the experiencer? You are. And who are you?
Consciousness. And what is consciousness? This question cannot be answered.The moment you answer it, you have falsified it, made it into another
object. Consciousness, the traditional word for which is spirit, cannot be known
in the normal sense of the word, and seeking it is futile.All knowing is within the realm of duality – subject and object, the
knower and the known. The subject, the I, the knower without which nothing could
be known, perceived, thought, or felt, must remain forever unknowable.This is because the I has no form. Only forms can e known, and yet
without the formless dimension, the world of form could not be.It is the luminous space in which the world arises and subsides. That
space is the life that I Am. It is timeless. I Am timeless, eternal.What happens in that space is relative and temporary: pleasure and pain,
gain and loss, birth and death.

You get taken in by every thought, every emotion, and every
experience to such a degree that you are in fact in a dreamlike state. This has
been the normal state of humanity for thousands of years.

Although you cannot know consciousness, you can become
conscious of it as yourself. You can sense it directly in any situation, no
matter where you are.

Discover inner space by creating gaps in the stream of
thinking. Without these gaps, your thinking becomes repetitive, uninspired,
devoid of any creative spark, which is how it still is for most people on the
planet.

“Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able,
whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be more powerfully
transformative than attending all of these courses. And it’s free.”

Being aware of your breathing takes attention away from
thinking and creates space. It is one way of generating consciousness.

Breathing isn’t really something that you do but
something that you witness as it happens.Breathing
happens by itself.The intelligence
within the body is doing it. All you have to do is watch it happening. There is
no strain or effort involved.

Many people’s breath is unnaturally shallow. The more you
are aware of the breath, the more its natural depth will re-establish itself.

Formal meditation, however, is no substitute for brining
space consciousness into everyday life. Being aware of your breath forces you
into the present moment – the key to all inner transformation. Whenever you
are conscious of the breath, you are absolutely present. You may also notice
that you cannot think and be aware of your breathing.Conscious breathing stops your mind. But far from being in a trance or
half asleep, you are fully awake and highly alert. You are not falling below
thinking, but rising above it. And if you look more closely, you will find that
those two things – coming fully into the present moment and ceasing thinking
without loss of consciousness – are actually one and the same: the arising of
space consciousness.

If you have a compulsive behaviour patter such as smoking,
overeating, drinking, TV watching, Internet addiction, or whatever it may be,
this is what you can do: When you notice the compulsive need arising in you,
stop and take three conscious breaths. This generates awareness. Then for a few
minutes be aware of the compulsive urge itself as an energy field inside you.
Consciously feel that need to physically or mentally ingest or consume a certain
substance or the desire to act out some form of compulsive behaviour.Then take a few more conscious breaths.After that you may find that the compulsive urge has disappeared – for
the time being. Or you may find that it still overpowers you, and you cannot
help but indulge or act it out again.Don’t
make it into a problem. Make the addiction part of your awareness practice in
the way described above.As
awareness grows, addictive patterns will weaken and eventually dissolve.Remember, however, to catch any thoughts and justify the addictive
behaviour, sometimes with clever arguments, as they arise in your mind. Ask
yourself, Who is talking here? And you will realize the addiction is talking. As
long as you know that, as long as you are present as the observer of your mind,
it is less likely to trick you into doing what it wants.

Take two or three conscious breaths. Now see if you can
detect a subtle sense of aliveness that pervades your entire inner body. Can you
feel your body from within, so to speak?

...your physical body, which is form, reveals itself as
essentially formless when you go deeper into it. It becomes a doorway into inner
space. Although inner space has no form, it is intensely alive. That “empty
space” is life in its fullness, the un-manifested Source out of which all
manifestation flows. The
traditional word for that Source is God.

When I no longer confuse who I am with a temporary form of
“me,” then the dimension of the limitless and the eternal – God – can
express itself through “me” and guide “me.” It also frees me from
dependency on form.

The all-important question is: At this moment, can I sense
the presence of inner space, which really means, can I sense my own Presence, or
rather, the Presence that I Am?

As much as possible in everyday life, use awareness of the
inner body to create space. When waiting, when listening to someone, when
pausing to look at the sky, a tree, a flower, your partner, or child, feel the
aliveness within at the same time.This
means part of your attention or consciousness remains formless, and the rest is
available for the outer world of form. Whenever you “inhabit” your body in
this way, it serves as an anchor for staying present in the Now. It prevents you
from losing yourself in thinking, in emotions, or in external situations.

The frequency and duration of those spaces determine your
ability to enjoy life, to feel an inner connectedness with other human beings as
well as nature. It also determines the degree to which you are free of ego
because ego implies complete unawareness of the dimension of space.

De-emphasizing who you are on the level of form is another
way of generating consciousness. Discover the enormous power that flows through
you into the world when you stop emphasizing your form-identity.

“Stillness is the language God speaks, ....”Stillness is really another world for space.

Being aware of stillness means to be still. To be still is
to be conscious without thought.

When you are still, you are who you are beyond your
temporal existence: consciousness – unconditioned, formless, eternal.

Chapter Nine: Your Inner Purpose

As soon as you rise above mere survival, the question of
meaning and purpose becomes of paramount importance in your life.

There is no substitute for finding true purpose.

...the most important thing to realize is this: Your life
has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is
primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary. While this book speaks
mainly of your inner purpose, this chapter and the next will also address the
question of how to align outer purpose and inner purpose in your life. Inner and
outer, however, are so intertwined that it is almost impossible to speak of one
without referring to the other.

Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.
You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is
the purpose of humanity....Your
outer purpose can change over time....Finding
and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling
your outer purpose. It is the basis for true success.

Awakening is a shift in consciousness in which thinking and
awareness separate. For most people it is not an event but a process they
undergo. Even those rare beings who experience a sudden, dramatic, and seemingly
irreversible awakening will still go through a process in which the new state of
consciousness gradually flows into and transforms everything they do and so
becomes integrated into their lives.

Awareness takes over from thinking.Instead of being in charge of your life, thinking becomes the servant of
awareness. Awareness is conscious connection with universal intelligence.
Another word for it is Presence: consciousness without thought.

The initiation of the awakening process is an act of grace.

For some people, the reading of this book will initiate the
awakening process. For others, the function of this book is to help them
recognize that they have already begun to awaken and to intensify and accelerate
the process. Another function of this book is to help people recognize the ego
within them whenever it tries to regain control and obscure the arising
awareness.

Once you have had a glimpse of awareness or Presence, you
know it firsthand.It is no longer
just a concept in your mind.You can
then make a conscious choice to be present rather than to indulge in useless
thinking. You can invite Presence into your life, that is to say, make space.With the grace of awakening comes responsibility.You can either try to go on as if nothing has happened, or you can see
its significance and recognize the arising of awareness as the most important
thing that can happen to you. Opening yourself to the emerging consciousness and
brining its light into this world then becomes the primary purpose of your life.

So while you are perhaps still waiting for something
significant to happen in your life, you may not realize that the most
significant thing that can happen to a human being has already happened within
you: the beginning of the separation process of thinking and awareness.

Seeing the madness of our civilization so clearly, they may
feel somewhat alienated from the culture around them.

Something is true when it resonates with and expresses your
innermost Being, when it is in alignment with your inner purpose.

...outer purpose alone is always relative, unstable, and
impermanent.This does not mean that
you should not be engaged in those activities. It means you should connect them
to your inner primary purpose, so that a deeper meaning flows into what you do.

...not your aims or your actions are primary, but the state
of consciousness out of which they come.Fulfilling
your primary purpose is laying the foundation of a new reality, a new earth.Once that foundation is there, your external purpose becomes charged with
spiritual power because your aims and intentions will be one with the
evolutionary impulse of the universe.

When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main
purpose of your life, you negate time. This is enormously empowering....Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the
doing itself becomes the focal point of your attention. Your doing then becomes
a channel through which consciousness enters this world.

Whatever you do takes time, and yet it is always now. So
while your inner purpose is to negate time, your outer purpose necessarily
involves future and so could not exist without time. But it is always secondary.
Whenever you becomes anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you
lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of
consciousness is primary, all else is secondary.

Everybody’s life really consists of small things.
Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favourite fantasy of the ego.The paradox is that the foundation for greatness is honouring the small
things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness.

...why did anxiety, stress, or negativity arise? Because
you turned away from the present moment. And why did you do that? Youthought something else was more important. You forgot your main purpose.One small error, one misperception, creates a world of suffering.

...one with what Life wants. That’s why it isn’t
worried or stressed.

...be true to life by being true to your inner purpose.

Your primary purpose is now to enable consciousness to flow
into what you do. The secondary purpose is whatever you want to achieve through
the doing.

When you meet with people, at work or wherever it may be,
give them your fullest attention. You are no longer there primarily as a person,
but as a field of awareness, of alert Presence.

The arising of that unifying field of awareness between
human beings is the most essential factor in relationships on the new earth.

What the world doesn’t tell you – because it doesn’t
know – is that you cannot become successful. You can only be successful.
Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a
successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what
you do, even the most simple action. Quality implies care and attention, which
comes with awareness. Quality requires your Presence.

What the future holds for you depends on your state of
consciousness now.

Some changes may look negative on the surface but you will
soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to
emerge.

Inner alignment with the present moment opens your
consciousness and brings it into alignment with the whole, of which the present
moment is an integral part.The
whole, the totality of life, then acts through you.

The whole is made up of existence and Being, the manifested
and the unmanifested, the world and God.So
when you become aligned with the whole, you become a conscious part of the
interconnectedness of the whole and its purpose: the emergence of consciousness
into this world.

...nature lives in unconscious oneness with the whole. It
is our purpose and destiny to bring a new dimension into this world by living in
conscious oneness with the totality and conscious alignment with the universal
intelligence.

Can the whole use the human mind to create things or bring
about situations that are in alignment with its purpose?

Yes, whenever there is inspiration, which translates as
“in spirit,” and enthusiasm, which means “in God,” there is a creative
empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.

Chapter Ten: A New Earth

...it follows that the universe too has an inner and outer
purpose inseparable from yours.The
outer purpose of the universe is to create form and experience the interaction
of forms – the play, the dream, the drama, or whatever you choose to call it.Its inner purpose is to awaken to its formless essence. Then comes the
reconciliation of outer and inner purpose: to bring that essence –
consciousness – into the world of form and thereby transform the world.

...on this planet at this time, that transformation is the
task allotted us. This is the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose, the
reconciliation of the world and God.

No thought can encapsulate the vastness of the totality.
Reality is a unified whole, but thought cuts it up into fragments. This gives
rise to fundamental misperceptions, for example, that there are separable things
and events, or that this is the cause
of that.

There is ultimately no such things as “your” life,
since you and life are not two, but one.

There is in our civilization a great deal of ignorance
about the human condition, and the more spiritually ignorant you are, the more
you suffer.

It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss
or personal tragedy,that the
spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people’s lives.This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer
purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open.

Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the
emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in
doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with that?

...some great loss or disability on the level of form has
become an opening into spirit.When
you have had a direct experience of the unstable nature of all forms, you will
likely never overvalue form again and thus lose yourself by blindly pursuing it
of attaching yourself to it.

When the ego is no longer identified with the return
movement in a person’s life, old age or approaching death becomes what is
meant to be: an opening into the realm of spirit.

On the new earth, old age will be universally recognized
and highly valued as a time for the flowering of consciousness.

As the new consciousness is beginning to emerge on the
planet, an increasing number of people no longer need to be shaken to have an
awakening. They embrace the awakening process voluntarily even while still
engaged in the outward cycle of growth and expansion.When that cycle is no longer usurped by the ego, the spiritual dimension
will come into this worldthrough
the outward movement – thought, speech, action, creation – as powerfully as
through the return movement – stillness, Being, and dissolution of form.

Without the impairment of egoic dysfunction, our
intelligence comes into full alignment with the outgoing cycle of universal
intelligence and its impulse to create.We
become conscious participants in the creation of form.It is not we who create, but the universal intelligence that creates
through us.

Struggle or stress is a sign that the ego has returned, as
are negative reactions when we encounter obstacles.

The only actions that do not cause opposing reactions are
those that are aimed at the good of all. They are inclusive, not exclusive. They
join; they don’t separate. They are not for “my” country but for all of
humanity, not for “my” religion but for the emergence of consciousness in
all human beings, not for “my” species but for all sentient beings and all
of nature.

We are also learning that action, although necessary, is
only a secondary factor in manifesting our external reality. The primary factor
in creation is consciousness.

Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle
behind the arising of form. Consciousness has been preparing forms for millions
of years so that it can express itself through them in the manifested.

The unmanifested flows into this dimension as awareness,
inner space, Presence. How does it do that? Through the human form that becomes
conscious and thus fulfills its destiny.

On our planet, the human ego represents the final stage of
universal sleep, the identification of consciousness with form. It was a
necessary stage in the evolution of consciousness.

Awakened doing is the outer aspect of the next stage in the
evolution of consciousness on our planet.

Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose –
what you do – with your inner purpose – awakening and staying awake. Through
awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe.
Consciousness flows though you into this world.It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do
and guides and empowers it.

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines
whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is
determined by your state of consciousness.

What you do will be dysfunctional and of the ego unless it
arises out of one of these three modalities.

The modalities of awakened doing are acceptance, enjoyment,
and enthusiasm.Each one
represents a certain vibrational frequency of consciousness.You need to be vigilant to make sure that one of them operates whenever
you are engaged in doing anything at all – from the most simple task to the
most complex.If you are not in the
state of either acceptance, enjoyment, or enthusiasm, look closely and you will
find that you are creating suffering for yourself and others.

Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept
that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means:For now, this is what the situation, this moment, requires me to do, and
so I do it willingly.

If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you
do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you
can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that
really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking
responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking
responsibility for your life.

On the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the
motivating power behind people’s actions.

When you make the present moment, instead of the past and
future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do – and
with it the quality of your life – increases dramatically.Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being. When the creative power of the
universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests joy.

That tomorrow will never come unless you begin enjoying
what you are doing now.

Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you
do and thus into this world from deep within you.

...what is the relationship between something that you do
and the state of joy? You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully
present, any activity that is not just a means to an end. It isn’t the action
you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows
into it. That aliveness is one with who you are.

Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment
and creative expansion into your life. Make a list of a number of everyday
routine activities that you perform frequently.

Then, whenever you are engaged in those activities, let
them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense
the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity.

If you feel your life lacks significance or is too
stressful or tedious, it is because you haven’t brought that dimension into
your life yet. Being conscious in
what you do has not become your main aim.

The new earth arises as more and more people discover that
their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this
world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness.

The joy of Being is the joy of being conscious.

Awakened consciousness then takes over from ego and beings
to run your life.

Some of those people who, through creative action, enrich
the lives of many others simply do what they enjoy doing most without wanting to
achieve or become anything through that activity.

Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do
plus the added element of a goal or vision that you work toward.

When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to
be doing what you are doing, you become stressed.The balance between enjoyment and structural tension is lost, and the
latter has won. When there is stress, it is usually a sign that the ego has
returned, and you are cutting yourself off from the creative power of the
universe.

“Nothing great has ever been achieved without
enthusiasm.” The word enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek – en and theos, meaning God.... “to be possessed by a god.” With enthusiasm you will find that
you don’t have to do it all by yourself. In fact, there is nothing of
significance that you can do by yourself. Sustained enthusiasm brings into
existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do then is “ride the
wave.”

Enthusiasm brings an enormous empowerment into what you
do...

Unlike egoic wanting, which creates opposition in direct
proportion to the intensity of its wanting, enthusiasm never opposes. It is
non-confrontational. Its activity does not create winners and losers. It is
based on inclusion, not exclusion, of others.

When enthusiasm encounters obstacles in the form of adverse
situations or uncooperative people, it never attacks but walks around them or by
yielding or embracing turns the opposing energy into a helpful one, the foe into
a friend.

Enthusiasm and the ego cannot coexist....Enthusiasm knows where it is going, but at the same time, it is deeply
at one with the present moment, the source of its aliveness, its joy, and its
power.

...make sure your goals are dynamic, that is to say, point
toward an activity that you are engaged in and through which you are connected
to other human beings as well as to the whole....see yourself inspiring countless people with your work and enriching
their lives. Feel how that activity enriches or deepens not only your life but
that of countless others. Feel yourself being an opening through which energy
flows from the unmanifested Source of all life through you for the benefit of
all.

All this implies that your goal or vision is then already a
reality within you, on the level of mind and of feeling.

You cannot manifest what you want; you can only manifest
what you already have. ... Jesus
gave the key to the creative use of mind and to the conscious manifestation of
form when he said, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received
it, and it will be yours.”

...when you look to the future for salvation, you are
unconsciously looking to your own mind for salvation. You are trapped in form,
and that is ego.

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,” writes the
biblical prophet.The foundation for
a new earth is a new heaven – the awakening of consciousness. The earth –
external reality – is only its outer reflection....only the present moment can make us fee. That realization is the
awakening....So the new heaven, the
awakened consciousness, is not a future state to be achieved. A new heaven and a
new earth are arising within you at this moment...

“Heaven is right here in the midst of you.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the
earth.”

The meek are the egoless. They are those who have awakened
to their essential true nature as consciousness and recognize that essence in
all “others,” all life-forms.They
live in the surrendered state and so feel their oneness with the whole and the
Source.They embody the awakened
consciousness that is changing all aspects of life on our planet, including
nature, because life on earth is inseparable from the human consciousness that
perceives and interacts with it.That
is the sense in which the meek will inherit the earth.

A new species is arising on the planet. It is arising now,
and you are it!